Dove Tree Mandala

'Dove Tree Mandala'

copyright 2012 by Shiloh Moore

Mixed Media on Canvas

14"x14" square

I've had this piccie in mind for a long time.  In early July I made a scribble that had the beginnings of the idea:

I wanted to use the tree as a circle in a square like a mandala.  I've been looking at art by mixed media artists so I wanted to experiment and use different media and textures. 

In the foreground I made doves using the design I created for the doves in "Be Free" (Sunday Feb 12, 2012 on ByShi).  I made them from beautiful black and purple musical manuscript papers by 'Alison Ellis Design - A Formal Affair'.

In the background, to make the circle in the centre, I glued down some out-of-copyright manuscript within the circle.  Then I scrunched some tissue paper and glued that down, before doing the wash with watercolours in greens.  Here is the paper with tissue: 

For the sky around the tree I glued down text from a book I bought cheaply from a thrift shop.  Then I covered this with scrunched tissue paper and then coloured it using watercolours.

I joined the two backgrounds together and outlined them in black:

Then I thickened the outline in pen and added design to the sun and the trunk of the tree.

I liked it as is, but as it's such a large canvas I thought it still needed a foreground.  So I went ahead and added the cut out doves and outlined them in pen.  I put tiny doves in the corners and added the wavy lines to the corners to give it a finished look and so the corners didn't look bare.

 'Dove Tree Mandala'

copyright 2012 by Shiloh Moore

To me this symbolises peace, freedom, beauty, earthiness, nature and love.